July 24, 2007

Learning is all about motivation, and if there is something motivating
children worldwide nowadays is the little wizard's seven tome saga. Now that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is out and about, bilingual families worldwide have a great tool available. If
you are trying to teach another language to your children, Harry Potter
has been translated to over 67 different languages - check out more
details at the Wikipedia entry, and find out how to buy translated
books here -, providing you with tools and resources to make their
vocabulary and fluency improve, as if by magic. My cousin's girls, back
in Brazil, go to a French School, and as we sent them the huge books,
all in Voltaire's dialect, they devoured it as fast as they said "Merci
beaucoup!"

A quick list of three games and tricks to help teaching languages with Harry Potter:

1.
If they have already finished reading it in their mother tongue, open
in a random page, ask them to scan the page quickly and tell what is
this page about. The first one that comes up with the answer gets a
lollipop.
2. Cut windows in a paper to hide certain words - verbs work best - in a long sentence, and ask them to "fill in the blanks".3.
Make a contest using the proper nouns and invented words in the books -
pick some, make a list of 5 for each kid and ask them to find the
translation. Whoever finishes his/her list first, wins the contest.

July 18, 2007

Toti has been fascinated with ethnicities. He sees Asian people and asks them if they came from China. Someone darker, "Are you from Africa?". Before it started feeling more awkward than cute, I explained to him that people can look like they came from other countries, but they are still American, they are all from San Francisco. To what he replied:

July 11, 2007

July 10, 2007

This morning my son woke me up asking me to come back to
dance camp. “Why did you want to leave Dance Camp, mamãe? You didn’t like it
there?” I wish all life, everyday, could be like dance camp, my son, my sun.

Dance camp was where I decided to celebrate my 34th
birthday, less than a month ago. We spent 4 unforgettable days in this National
Park smack in the middle of California, in a sunny, rolling green hills
sanctuary. Dozens of classes to choose from: yoga, contact improvisation,
barefoot boogie, African, trapeze, you name it. Anything fun and interesting
was available within a trail path's reach. I’ve made instant friends that I
hope to see again in many dance floors. My son spent memorable mornings and
afternoons at a Kids camp with lovely teachers. We had delicious organic
vegetarian meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even the mandatory 3 hours
service was like an exhilarating experience (I did food prep at the kitchen).
When it came time to leave, and we had to leave before the camp officially
ended, my son was protesting. Well, what can I say? Hopefully, next year we’ll
come back. The biggest experience that I’ve brought from there was to finally
get to know 5 Rhythms. The very first class I had was a “Sweat your Prayers”
and boy, the last time I remember having this spiritual amplification through
dancing was a long time ago, perhaps in Bahia’s carnival, dancing in the middle
of Olodum drummers. Meditation through movement, losing oneself in dance.
Sounds Sufi, sounds witchery. When you
become nothing and everything and you can only feel the energy of the many
moving bodies responding to the same rhythm. Since I arrived back home I’ve got
a movie, some songs and a book, all about the 5 Rhythms creator, Gabrielle Roth.
I am trying to learn how she got there, how she came upon such insight. I don’t
even know if I really need to understand it. I only need to have this
experience once again.

In Roth’s book “Sweat Your Prayers: Movement as Spiritual
Practice”, I’ve found a poem that resonates a lot with the way I am feeling (right now I am in one of those why-not-just-move-to-the-country-
raise-chicken-and-be-a-yoga- teacher-in-my-own-barnyard-turned-studio weeks) …
(P.S.:That is how I usually call my PMS weeks)...

The poem was written by one of Gabrielle’s students, Jewel
Mathieson…. and I would like to share it with all of you…

LINKS!

TODAY IS A JAMIROQUAI DAY - ALRIGHT?Nostalgic mood, remembering how much fun I used to have. Listening to Space Cowboy, Virtual Insanity and Cosmic Girl in YouTube. I've never thought I was going to be one of those people that go like "good times were the old times". But I haven't been in a party like that for a while...

TRUEMORS, YOUR COCKTAIL PARTY CONVERSATION FUELIf you need great conversation starters for social gatherings and stuff, check out Truemors.com daily. Soon you'll be generating heated debates starting like "have you heard that bat bandwidth is species specific?", or "did you hear that a cigar smoked by Elvis Presley sold for $550 at the Elvis Expo Tradeshow in Memphis?".

NOW LISTENING:Pandora, the radio from the Music Genome Project, is an automated music recommendation FREE service and highly addictive. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users give feedback on each song choice — approving or disapproving — which Pandora takes in consideration when making future selections.